[Buddha-l] Sabba Sutta

[Jayarava]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for this clarification. 


--- On Thu, 27/11/08, Richard Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu> wrote:

> What I find intriguing about Kalupahana's treatment of
> causality is that as an empiricist Kalupahana wants to
> agree with Hume that no one actually ever observes a causal event; 
> all we observe is things taking place, and on these events we imagine
> patterns of similarity by ignoring differences. On the other hand,
> Kalupahana also wants to say that the Buddha had profound insights into
> karma and its ripening, which of course is an example of precisely the
> sort of causality that a Humean empiricist would say is impossible.

This is quite helpful. I'll have to look up the Hume for beginners or something - my undergrad degree was in chemistry and Hume didn't come up - fumes, but no Humes. Is Kalupahana's view also known as 'phenomenalism'?

> In other words, the Buddha was a strict empiricist in his observation of 
> the sorts of things that would be metaphysical claims if anyone else 
> made them.

Yes. He kind of sneaks abhiññā in as a kind of cognition on a par with other kinds of cognition, and hence a function of the mind. He focuses on āsavakkhaya but seems to gloss of the other abhiññā - like levitation and clairvoyance. He's quite ambivalent about these.

> Any self-proclaimed empiricist who privileges the observational 
> capacities of a special being, such as God or an
> omniscient buddha, hardly qualifies as an empiricist of the
> likes of Locke or Hume, and is certainly unlike any Positivist I
> have ever encountered. On the other hand, Kalupahana's position
> is perhaps not much more bizarre that Bishop Berkeley's.

Hmmm. Kalupahana notes that it is only (unspecified or possibly Saravastivadin) later Buddhist metaphysicians [sic] who claim omniscience for the Buddha - in Pali the Buddha denies this (have checked and he does). Omniscience is a Jain claim, although a yakkha does refer to Gotama as sabbaviduṃ (Sn 177).  However, Kalupahana invokes the Sabba Sutta precisely at this point - if the Buddha did know *everything*, then the only kind of everything he could know would be delimited by the senses six. 

He goes on to quote passages to the effect that sammāsambuddha is not completely divorced from the senses. 

> Manas observes the aggregates: vedanā, samjñā and
> sanskāra. Wisdom is one of the sanskāras, so it is an
> object that manas observes. But wisdom itself is a form of judgement
> that operates in ways that cannot possibly be described in a perfectly 
> empirical manner, because one cannot directly observe, even with manas,
> whether an action is going to be productive or counterproductive of 
> expected results. 

Sticking with Kalupahana's later view he has added that in addition to knowing what is empirically verifiable, the Buddha's knowledge (because of the knowledge of āsavakkhaya) extends to what is "morally significant". 

Why can one not possibly empirically know the moral significance of an action? Aren't you just making an a priori claim to knowledge yourself here?  (I get the feeling that playing advocatus diaboli for Kaluphana is going to weary me quite quickly, but I'm still trying to understand what he is saying). 

Is it because Kalupahana is simply taking the textual stories about abhiññā at face value? Or is there a definite reason why it can never be true?


> There is just no way to make canonical Buddhism (which is
> the only kind that Kalupahana seems to accept as legitimate Buddhism)
> into a way of acqiring knowledge that is consistent with scientific
> method. Canonical Buddhism is very much a pre-modern kind of dogmatism. 

I tend to see it as a pre-modern pragmatism - but that is another argument. Actually I see no reason that scientific method could not be invoked here quite successfully - all it would require is someone who has experienced āsavakkhaya. They could predict the consequences of actions, and the scientists could follow up to see if the prediction was correct. Is there a Buddha in the house?

This seems to be why Buddhists are interested in Quantum Mechanics and brain scans - they hold out the possibility of scientific verification of religious conviction. As if that would make them happy, eh?

One of the ironic things about Kalupahana is that he is arguing for empiricism on the basis of conjecture, not empiricism - ie he argues from belief, textual sources, and inference; but never from his own experience! 

> According to Kalupahana, we have the authority of the
> omniscient Buddha whose capacities to know things are unlike 
> those of any ordinary mortal. So if you like the idea of an omniscient 
> God, you'll love Kalupahana's Buddha. 

To be fair you are misrepresenting Kalupahana here. He does not (in what I'm reading anyway) claim omniscience for the Buddha and is dismissive of claims to omniscience in the sense of the English word. He does accept that the Buddha had the higher knowledge, but this is not all-knowledge.  

The other user of the Sabba Sutta I'm interested in is Sue Hamilton - more of a pragmatist. Minor mentions go to Peter Harvey who quotes it in The Selfless Mind, and Glen Wallis translates it in his Basic Teachings. 

Anyone know of other substantial uses of the Sabba Sutta?


> In fact it is more than enough for me, in that I am a miserable failure 
> at following even the pretty good advice of the Buddha and other sages 
> like him.

"Only the true messiah denies his divinity" - Life of Brian.

Thanks for rescuing my hijacked thread by the way!

Best wishes
Jayarava